a cabin breathed.
Sunlight poured through wide windows, yet it carried weight, like liquid gold pooling across the floorboards. Every grain of wood glowed faintly, as though the house had once been alive and never quite forgot. Dust motes drifted like tiny planets caught in orbit.
Kai woke beneath that light, ribs aching, the taste of snow still ghosting his tongue.
An old man sat beside the cot—Knov—sleeves rolled high, ink-stained fingers threading a bone needle through Kai's skin. Each stitch drew sigils that burned cold: alchemical rings, spirals that tightened like nooses, a pentagram on each shoulder whose points bled downward into living tattoos that crawled when he blinked.
The pain was precise. Sacred.
Knov never looked up. "You fell far, fanged one. Farther than most. The mountain tried to keep you."
Kai's throat rasped. "Who are you? Why call me that?"
"Because you will earn the name."
The needle paused. Knov finally met his gaze—eyes winter skies, pale and endless.
"I am Knov. Caretaker of fragments. Servant of Azourath, who was cast down for teaching mortals to bind spirits to their will. The craft you call guardians? That was his gift. His crime. His legacy."
Velnix stirred behind Kai, a ripple of recognition and grief.
Knov laid three shards on the blanket—silver like frostbite, crimson like a closed wound, blue like drowned midnight. They pulsed, alive, hungry.
"Choose," he said. "One only. More and they war inside you until one devours the rest."
Flicker's voice crackled in Kai's skull, eager. "Blue. Blue tastes like sky and secrets."
Dualmind cut in, calm. [Blue is Consciousness. Dream-walking. Long-term strategic.]
Velnix remained silent, but the cloak around Kai tightened—protective, possessive.
Kai reached for the crimson shard.
It shattered against his palm like glass made of hunger. Pain lanced through his chest, veins, teeth. The room spun. When it settled, something new coiled beneath his ribs—warm, sharp, waiting.
Knov nodded, satisfied. "Soul. Good. You will bind pieces of yourself into the world. Objects will remember you. Weapons will love you. The dead will speak if you ask politely."
He rose, joints creaking like old doors. "This cabin is yours now. A pocket folded between breaths. I must walk the Human Realm—Nezurath, as Azourath once named it—and scatter the last shards. Hunt them later if you desire power. For now, learn what you can."
"Wait—" Kai pushed himself upright, the new weight in his chest thrumming. "Azourath created guardians? That's why I have velnix? "
"Yes.. oh before I go I should explain the tattoos I gave you. One hand destroys one creates. That is all." Knov said before leaving.
Knov was already descending the trapdoor stairs, footsteps fading into the basement's dark.
Kai followed, curiosity burning hotter than pain.
The stairs creaked beneath his weight. Halfway down, something skittered across the wood—small, fast, wrong.
A centipede. No longer than a finger, carapace gleaming blood-red, legs like needles. It reared, mandibles clicking, and lunged.
Kai jerked back, but it was faster. It struck his wrist, fangs sinking deep. Pain flared white-hot, then cold—like venom trying to read him.
The centipede froze. Its tiny body shuddered. Then, with a sound like tearing silk, it ripped open a pinprick rift—crimson, pulsing—and vanished through it.
The wound on Kai's wrist sealed instantly, leaving only a faint red mark shaped like a spiral.
Knov's voice drifted up from below, calm as ever. "It tasted you. And rejected you."
Kai stared at the empty air where the creature had been. "What the hell was that?"
"A messenger," Knov called back. "From a place that will remember you later."
Kai descended the rest of the way, heart hammering. The basement stretched wide—shelves of relics, a forge glowing low in the corner, and the runic circle burned into the floor, cold and waiting.
Knov stood at its center, already fading.
"Learn the cabin," he said. "Learn yourself. The red one will return when you're ready."
Then he was gone. Nothing but a runic circle on the ground.
Kai stood alone beneath the golden light, tattoos burning cold, the crimson shard now a second heartbeat beneath his ribs.
And for the first time since the blizzard tried to claim him, Kai smiled.
For some reason.